Hi Wes:

From what I know of interactions with my WAW, she is very confused. In fact, my WAWs' memory is so shot sometimes (they are under a lot of stress too) that she is not thinking straight. You attribute too much perspicacity to your WAW at this point by thinking about what her motives are. The only thing that you can safely assume is that she is not interested in an R with you right now. So, I too dont believe in going dark as a strategy to make the WAW miss you and things like that. Believe me, the WAW will do all sorts of unusual things to fill the void left by your absence. Mine has cultivated short-term friendships with people she has really nothing in common with, relied on "new" friends to spend time with etc. WAWs are flailing of course and after a long enough time they may actually start to miss you or the life that they had, but in the short term not much will come out of going dark really. It never has for me at least. There is an interesting article by JamesJohn somewhere (Newcomers perhaps) talking about going dark and LRT as techniques for you to work on yourself and not to be employed as a tool to pry the WAW mind open.

Regarding what works, if you keep initiating contact your WAW may keep acceding but that may not mean anything either. I really think that this is a really long process. For example, mid-life crises can take anywhere between 3-5 years to turn around. There also seems to be quite a wide chasm between "spending time together" and "committing to working on a relationship". The former is fun, the latter work. The problem with initiating a lot of contact and such is that there is no pressure relief for the WAW and the pursuer-distancer dynamic takes hold. Lately I have stopped pressure altogether. I am trying to stay happy, busy and upbeat when W and I are together, which is quite often due to D3. When I do that my W does seem comfortable with me. So far, when she has been that way, I get all excited (moral: keep expectations at zero) and then she retracts again. I have stopped enjoying that dynamic. So, I am being a lot more independent now.

But I dont know anything. Just throwing some thoughts at you based on my experience. Perhaps the wise ones will chime in.

UD

The 3 laws of DBing: 1. PMA is critical to DBing. 2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical. 3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.